NITEL

NITEL

Nigerian Telecommunications Limited was formed in 1985 as the combination of the telecommunications division of Post and Telecommunications and NET. The new company was formed to improve coordination of telecommunication services within the country, to make internal communications more commercial in objective and to reduce duplication of budgetary allocations and investments. NITEL inherited mostly analogue infrastructure from its predecessors and had to fund new investments in digital infrastructures. It introduced mobile telephony in 1992, through MTS, a partnership with Digital Communications Limited, an Atlanta-based firm. However, operationally, it was still inefficient, the lines were congested, the billing system was inefficient and the call completion rate for long-distance calls was below 50%. When new private telephone services emerged in Lagos during the 1990s, many of them depended on an unreliable NITEL for inter-connectivity services. In addition, demand for services in some cities was much higher than the capacity of NITEL while many NITEL lines were inoperative due to lack of maintenance of infrastructure or inadequate supporting cable network infrastructure.